Massacres Against the Palestinian People: Part I

Right from the beginning, Zionism held terrorism as one of its indispensable weapons for the achievement of its dream in a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This meant forcing its people to leave, and those who will nit, will eventually die until the demographic balance favors the Jewish population. The U.N. partition plan, embodied in Resolution 181, proposed a Jewish State to house 498,000 Jews and 497,000 Arab Palestinians, which clearly indicated that it will not be an exclusively Jewish state, especially because of the high population growth rate among the Palestinians, around 10% at that time. The only way for achieving the Zionist dream was thus to forcibly compel these Arab inhabitants to leave as they have adamantly insisted not to quit voluntarily. The 1948 war was the darkest page in this history of bloodshed in which more than 13,000 Palestinian civilians were killed in 34 massacres around Palestine and about another 900,000 were forced to flee, 94% of them under direct threats of death. Below are some of the most tragically remembered massacres as recorded in some important testimonies:

The Massacre at Baldat al-Shaikh (Dec 31, 1947)

As the world was preparing to welcome the New Year, Hagana gang members stormed the village of Baldat al-Shaikh (now under the Zionist name Tell Ghanan) in pursuit of unarmed citizens, and in order to foment an atmosphere of fear, that will trigger others to flee. The death toll of this massacre reached approximately 600 people, whose bodies were mainly found inside the village houses.

The Massacre at Sacsac in Hebron (Feb 14-15, 1948)

The Zionist attacked the village at midnight, and the frightened citizens sought refuge in their houses. The Zionist forces bombed 20 houses killing 150 trapped civilians.


The Massacre at Abu Kasr (March 31, 1948)

This massacre was carried out by terrorists from the Hagana armed organization, which subsequently became the nucleus of the Zionist Army. The massacre occured during an armed attack and a series of explosion operations. The Zionist terrorists pursued the unarmed villagers who tried to flee from their homes.

The Massacre at Deir Yasin (April 10, 1948)

The Zionist gangs Stern, Irgun and Hagana raided the Arab village of Deir Yasin at 2:00 a.m., 10 April 1948. According to eyewitnesses, there terrorists killed everyone within shooting range, and subsequently threw bombs to destroy the houses along with everyone inside them. The terrorists of these notorious gangs searched the rubble to massacre everyone who remained alive inside the demolished houses.

The Zionist massacre continued until the afternoon of the same day. Before withdrawing from the village, the terrorists gathered together the remaining villagers and executed them in cold blood, including elderly people, women and children.

In describing the massacre, an eyewitness recounted, "A bride and groom at their final wedding celebration were the first victims. First they were thrown down along with thirty-three of their neighbors, then they were forced to stand up against a wall and pelted with machine-gun fire with their hands tied."


Fahmi Zaydan, the only survivor of his family in this massacre, was twelve years old at that time. He recounted the plight of his family by saying, "The Jews ordered everybody in my family to stand up with their faces to the wall. Then they started opening fire on us. I was wouded in my side. Most of our kids managed to survived because we hid behind our families. But a bullet shattered the head of my sister Qadriya, who was four years old, and everybody else who was standing along the wall was killed, including my mother and father, my grandmother and grandfather, my maternal aunts and uncles, and some of their kids."

Halima Eid, a descendent of one of the largest families in Deir Yasin, was thirty years old at the time of the massacre. She recalled, "I saw a Jew who shot my brother's wife, Khaldiya, in the neck. She was about to give birth. Then he slashed her stomach open with a butcher knife. And when one of the women try to get the baby out of the dead mother's womb, they killed her too. Her name was Aisha Radwan."

In another house, Hana' Khalil (16 years old at the time) saw a Jewish terrorist unsheathe a large knife and use it to slit open the body of her neighbor, Jamila Habash, from head to toe. Then he killed another neighbor, who belonged to family by the name of the Fathis, in the same manner and on the doorstep of the same house.

The same sort of atrocities were repeated in all houses. According to accounts obtained from survivors, female Jews belonging to the oranizations Lehi and Itzel had also participated in the massacre. Jacque de Renee, head of the Red Cross mission in Palestine in 1948, described the terrorists who carried out the massacre at Deir Yasin by saying, "They were young men and teenagers, male and female, bristling with arms (pistols, machine guns and hand grenades). [When I saw them], most of them were still spattered with blood, with huge daggers in their hands. A girl from one of the Jewish gangs, whose eyes looked as though they were still full of the crime, held out her hands still dripping with blood, swinging them back and forth as they were some sort of war medal."

He adds, "I went into one house and found it full of shattered furniture and splinters of all sorts ... When I was about to leave the place I heard the sound of moaning and sighing. As I looked for the source of the sound, I stumbled upon a small, warm foot. It belonged to a ten-year-old girl who had been maimed by a hand grenade, but who was still alive. When I began to pick her up, an "Israeli" officer tried to prevent me, but I pushed him out of the way! Then I continued my work. No one had been left alive except for two women, one of them an elderly woman who had hidden behind a pile of firewood. Of the 400 inhabitants of the village, forty escaped. The rest were slaughtered, indiscriminately and in cold blood."


Menachem Begin, former Prime Minister of "Israel", boasted about this massacre in one of his books by recording: "This operation had tremendous, unanticipated results. After hearing the news of Deir Yasin, the Arabs were panicked and began fleeing in terror. Out of a total of 800,000 Arabs, who had been living in the land of present-day "Israel", only 156,000 remained." And Begin finds fault with the Jewish leaders who declared themselves innocent of the massacre, accusing them of hypocrisy.

Begin goes on to say that the massacre at Deir Yasin "brought about decisive victories on the battlefield." Other terrorists have said that "without Deir Yasin, it would not have been possible for "Israel" to come into existence." Like Itzel and Lehi, they continued to defend the massacre. In fact, Lehi proudly labeled the actions of its members at Deir Yasin as "a humanitarian duty".

To be continued....

Cited from book:

History of Palestine: A Methodical Study of the Palestinian Struggle
Dr. Mohsen Mohammed Saleh